In Spring 2024, I had a conversation with Gemma Gasseau. It was a light talk, slow (full of definitions for lay-listeners) but deep at the same time, and definetely highly inspiring. It was based on her article 'Negotiating the public' (Globalizations, 2024). The talk was recorded in my late afternoon in Norway (after a toddler-care), and Gemma's early morning in the US. Enjoy the conversation in the podcast!

Credits to songs, as in other episodes of Season 5. Thank you for listening.

This is a perfect closing episode of Season 5 as I am heading to Season 6 with the concept of public domains.

I spoke to Marwa about her process in the PhD journey. I always find her research trajectory interesting and especially because she is committed to social movement agenda and groups. In this podcast episode, we also spoke about theories that have inspired her. It is highly recommended for those just starting a research in water governance, and indeed for those wanting updates about Jakarta.

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Marwa is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia and a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK. Her PhD Programme has received supports from Jardine Foundation.

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Opening music:

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Theme music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining. The mining supplies the material to build a new large dam that had been long planned by the national government to supply water and energy for the new international airport in Southern Java.

Season music:

Jakarta by Mardika (Revolt Music)

It is very timely to speak about accountability, a topic that Preeta Dhar has been engaging with in water governance. She is a PhD Candidate at SOAS University of London. Her dissertation project seeks to address system accountability that is beyond the technical needs in addressing corruption or mis-management. Her aim is to understand power dynamics beyond the visible stretch of water infrastructures. Towards the end of the conversation we mentioned about the People’s Water Forum, which unfortunately has been forcedly annulled by the Indonesian Government.

CO-Water Voice Theme Music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining.

Opening music:

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Closing music and song:

Selamat Pagi by Sanggar Ciliwung Merdeka. The song was recorded by Prathiwi in Jakarta during their rehearsal on 18 March 2017. The children were still actively singing after their riverside workshop had been demolished in 2016, during a forced eviction. In 2016 alone, there were 193 cases of forced evictions with direct victims of 5.726 households and 5.379 informal business units in the kampungs of Jakarta, or the so-called slums, in the name of the Ciliwung river normalization program.

Dona Geagea is a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam within the research program NEWAVE – Next Water Governance, an EU funded Marie-Curie Innovative Training Network. Her research investigates emerging re-commoning water governance practices as a response to austerity crises in Terrassa and Naples. Previously, Dona’s Master research focused on the top-down impact of neoliberal policies at the global platform in eroding communal water management traditions in rural communities in Kenya. In the course of her PhD research, she has published in Urban Studies and International Journal of the Commons.

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Opening music:

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Theme music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining. The mining supplies the material to build a new large dam that had been long planned by the national government to supply water and energy for the new international airport in Southern Java.

An introduction to Season 5. The point is to explain it, stupid!

This is not a stupid season, but smart, really! It is a call for a critical realist explanation.

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Theme music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining. The mining supplies the material to build a new large dam that had been long planned by the national government to supply water and energy for the new international airport in Southern Java.

I have been thinking about emergence of diverse struggling bodies, modalities of struggles, and organization of social movements/ institutionalisation of social movements. It is really great to have Mangala Subramaniam with us. She is a Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. She has been an important figure within diverse academic communities in the US and in India. Her most actual societal service in the academia is Senior Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research is in the broad areas of social inequality and social movements and she has published a number of outputs around water rights, including a book that discusses the history of World Water Forum and the emergence of People’s Water Forum. I think her trajectory of scholarship is valuable to enrich the current streams of anti-privatization literature.

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Minute 0 An excerpt from the conversation: the ambivalence of ‘state and community’

Minute 2 An introduction to the season and about the speaker in this episode 4.6

Minute 4 The conversation starts on the shift within water literature, and about urban-rural interlinkages

Minute 9 the locus of community

Minute 24 State institutions, protests and the role of social movements

Minute 30 The roles beyond the national states, the World Water Forum and the People’s Water Forum

Minute 36 ‘The people’ in the People’s Water Forum

Minute 37.5 Scholars’ position in advocating just water governance

Minute 40 Issues to further discuss towards the People’s Water Forum

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CO-Water Voice Theme Music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining.

Opening music:

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Closing music and song:

Selamat Pagi by Sanggar Ciliwung Merdeka. The song was recorded by Prathiwi in Jakarta during their rehearsal on 18 March 2017. The children were still actively singing after their riverside workshop had been demolished in 2016, during a forced eviction. In 2016 alone, there were 193 cases of forced evictions with direct victims of 5.726 households and 5.379 informal business units in the kampungs of Jakarta, or the so-called slums, in the name of the Ciliwung river normalization program.

Andreas Harsono is a senior journalist and a human right activist. He has written several reports on the case of water privatization especially in Jakarta. He links the privatization issue with democracy and accountability in governance as well as the Indonesian historical trajectory in infrastructure development and public policy making. Around 20 years after his reports on the case of Jakarta were published, the issues he has raised are still highly relevant: the absence of transparency and real participation in public policy making. It is so valuable to have him in this episode as he has reported on many other relevant themes such as transportation and other urban infrastructures, mining, environmental issues, state-sponsored violence, and discrimination of minority ethnic- and religious groups. I believe we can make some critical reflections beyond water governance.

Music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining.

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Mahalnya Keadilan by Mardika (Revolt Music) from Jakarta.

I am so glad to have Franziska Paul as our guest in this episode. She is a Lecturer in Political Economy at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Dr. Franziska Paul holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Glasgow, with her thesis on energy democracy and trade union movement building towards a new, radical labour environmentalism. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded Global Remunicipalisation project, in which she contributed some publications on public ownership, de-privatisation and democratisation of key services and infrastructures, including some case study in the US and Germany. Franziska is also involved with the Public Futures database, a collaborative initiative that was initiated by Transnational Institute in 2007; this database is the first comprehensive collection of de-privatisation cases in the world. In this episode I speak with Franziska about the German particular trajectory of neoliberal state and its context from which some social movement initiatives emerged to influence public policy.

Minute 5 our conversation starts with Franziska’s research trajectory and the Global Remunicipalisation Research Project

Minute 10 the governing structure of German states and public service provision obligation

Minute 14 the role of municipalities and ‘Daseinsvorsorge’

Minute 17 some rooms for privatization in the governance structures and the role of labour unions (for de-privatization)

Minute 20 Prathiwi’s comment on a couple of crucial agenda for the People’s Water Forum, Bali 2024

Minute 20.5 The conditions of possibility for labour unions care about environment

Minute 21 the global network of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED)

Minute 23 back to neoliberalism, the role of local state in it (a trajectory of Germany)

Minute 30 the French model and the British model of privatization

CO-Water Voice Theme Music: Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining.

Opening music: Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Closing music and song: Selamat Pagi by Sanggar Ciliwung Merdeka. The song was recorded by Prathiwi in Jakarta during their rehearsal on 18 March 2017. The children were still actively singing after their riverside workshop had been demolished in 2016, during a forced eviction. In 2016 alone, there were 193 cases of forced evictions with direct victims of 5.726 households and 5.379 informal business units in the kampungs of Jakarta, or the so-called slums, in the name of the Ciliwung river normalization program.

Episode #4.3 The People’s Coalition for the Rights to Water (KRUHA): the political economy context of its birth and the terrains of its struggles

Minute 2 an introduction to the Episode

Minute 3 a conversation with KRUHA begins with a summary how we got to know each other

Minute 4.5 the context from which KRUHA was born in 2002, the political economy in Indonesia at that time, including the role of World Bank

Minute 9 work-focus of KRUHA against the political agenda of World Bank, including KRUHA’s reading on Integrated Water Resource Management

Minute 11 the true root of Integrated Water Resource Management before it was reduced as merely an economic prescription of the World Bank

Minute 12 privatization as a political initiative to create water crisis

Minute 13.5 the word Coalition in ‘KRUHA’, what is it? Who were the members of the Coalition?

Minute 16,5 the political agenda of the Coalition

Minute 19 the case of water privatization in Jakarta, why urban water as the target for profit

Minute 21 Constitutional Court on public good VS. private good

Minute 27.5 How the logic of ‘water for profit’ operates before and after the decision of Constitutional Court to annul the 2004 Water Law that was neoliberal in nature

Minute 28 if writing a new law will matter to end privatization in the water sector

Minute 32 the relation between normative law and bureaucratic functions (including Omnibus Law)

Minute 35 new geopolitical configuration of corporative powerMinute 40 back to the role of social movement

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Music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining.

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Mahalnya Keadilan by Mardika (Revolt Music) from Jakarta.

Episode #4.2 on the trajectory of privatisation and the logic of (global) capital, as well as some possible paths that have emerged to improve public services

David McDonald joins us in this episode. He is a Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University in Canada.

He founded Municipal Services Project and serves as the co-director since 2000; Informed by social movements, labour unions and community groups, the Municipal Services Project examines trajectories of privatization in several countries and the possible paths towards the alternatives that have emerged from these particular locations. His extensive publications have enriched the debates over public versus private service delivery, especially in water, electricity and health care sectors, but he also locates these debates within the wider problems of urbanization, environmental justice and uneven development.

In this episode, we speak about the future of water services and the central institutional and agential transformations that might shape this future.

Minute 1.5 A Brief Introduction to Season 4

Minute 3 introducing David McDonald

Minute 4 the conversation begins

Minute 18 we (should) ask ‘do we really want to go back to that Keynesian era?’, pro-public movement as the opposite of the privatization movement should be expanded and consolidated

Minute 22 on technological arrangement in the context of control and democracy, on what kind of public service that we want, how to construct water utilities

Minute 29 the role of global pro-public movements, an understanding of what McDonald calls ‘generational shift’ for us to understand about the role of social movement, but also ‘ideological shift’

Minute 33 benchmarking of public water utilities, including the role of labour unions

Ca. Minute 39 public banks and cooperatives, on scale and level of provision as well as some key research agenda on public services in the context of climate change

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Music:

Solidas by Marjinal. The music was created during the solidarity action in Berlin, which was organized by the band on 18 February 2022. The solidarity evening was meant to support the struggles of communities in Indonesia against land grabbing and environmental degradation caused by the mining industry. Specific dedication in that evening was for the farming community in Wadas, whose village was destroyed by stone mining.

Biru Beriak by Lair from Jatiwangi, West Java. The music is dedicated to fisherfolk communities.

Mahalnya Keadilan by Mardika (Revolt Music) from Jakarta.